Mainstreaming Integrated Corridor Management: An Executive Level Primer

Chapter 3. Motivation and Readiness for Integrated Corridor Management (ICM)

This chapter provides information on the benefits of integrated corridor management to assist with making the business case for Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) and offers suggestions on readiness criteria for sites wanting to move forward with implementation.

Why Should You Invest in ICM?

While the concept of ICM makes sense to most transportation professionals, the benefits of such systems need to be understood and quantified so that investments can be weighed in terms of their relative merits and costs along with other transportation improvements. To that end, an independent evaluation was conducted on the two Pioneer ICM demonstration sites; the I-15 corridor in San Diego, California, and the U.S. 75 corridor in Dallas, Texas, that began operations in 2013. This evaluation³ found that the improved interagency cooperation and coordination brought about by going through the ICM process was a big success. Both San Diego and Dallas created a fundamental paradigm shift in the management of their respective corridors by creating strong multi-jurisdictional partnerships that set the foundation for a regional corridor management mindset — based on a platform of strong institutional, technical, and operational integration. Key findings that emerged from the evaluation of these demonstrations include the following benefits:

• Regional operations awareness of corridor congestion and incidents improved significantly through regional data sharing.
• Incident reporting details improved substantially in both regions.
• Corridor operators reported better situational awareness of corridor operating conditions, although there were opportunities to improve.
• Incident and congestion specific traveler information provision improved.
• While employing different levels of human involvement, the Decision Support System (DSS) at both sites proved to be valuable for better situational awareness, decision-making, and response coordination.
• Corridor mobility performance generally improved during ICM activations.
• Using the assumptions and modeling tools documented by the evaluators, the benefits estimated for San Diego's Integrated Corridor Management Systems (ICMS) easily exceeded costs (2:1 to 9:1), whereas the break-even point (1:1 ratio) for Dallas' ICMS was contained within the expected range for the benefit cost ratio.

Agencies should understand the evaluation challenges associated with ICM, specifically that relatively infrequent large-scale incidents are not likely to occur at the exact same location, at the same time, and under the same conditions in the before and after periods for direct comparison. Traffic modeling and other Analysis, Modeling, and Simulation (AMS) tools and techniques will play a key role in understanding ICM benefits.

Findings from a survey of the 13 implementation planning grant sites confirmed that there were significant institutional benefits of improved interagency cooperation and coordination brought about by going through the ICM process. While these benefits are difficult to quantify, they are clearly important in making the business case for ICM in your region. Having a more detailed understanding of the operational considerations of various corridor stakeholders will ultimately lead to operational benefits. For more information, please see the resources section.

Are You Ready to Get Started?

Before launching ahead (or further) into ICM deployment, it is first necessary to understand whether ICM is the right solution for your specific corridor or area. For example, if you do not have a congestion, incident, and travel time reliability issue or predicted problem to solve, then ICM may not be very beneficial to you. Likewise, network constraints, such as a lack of viable alternative routes or modes for a given corridor, may mean that there are not reasonable options for diverting travelers in case of an incident on the main freeway. Additionally, agencies should understand what they're getting into from an institutional perspective and decide whether or not they want to commit to those activities. A list of these attributes has been compiled below; a one-page handout of the same information is published for your reference and distribution at meetings.⁴

Prior to implementing ICM, local agencies and organizations need to address the following questions to ensure that they are properly prepared to address implementation and associated challenges and that ICM is the right solution to meet their transportation needs.

1. Is there significant congestion and unreliability along a corridor or travel shed?
   • The impact of ICM is more noticeable in areas with significant congestion and delay, as improved traffic flow in these areas can be more attributable to ICM strategy implementation than in areas that experience inconsistent congestion. Keep in mind that ICM may be very beneficial to have in place for managing the traffic conditions associated with major construction activities or special events.
2. Is additional infrastructure available within the corridor?
   • ICM requires additional infrastructure availability like parallel arterials, transit routes, and mode hubs, as transportation alternatives to the clogged freeway in the corridor/travel shed.
3. Does your area have multimodal capabilities?
   • A major feature of ICM is information sharing across modes, such as bus transit, rail transit, and freeway, from both an incident detection and management perspective and providing up-to-date traveler information. Traveler information allows users to make informed decisions about routing and mode used to get to their destination.
4. Does your area use a centralized data hub, like a Transportation Management Center (TMC)?
   • Real-time and historical data are vital to the simulation capabilities ICM and in developing scenarios (i.e., playbooks) for incidents management. A Transportation Management Center (TMC), or centralized data hub, makes it easier to organize and analyze data collected and come up with potential solutions.
5. What procurement practices can we use?
   • ICM is comprised of multiple systems, components, and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Procurement issues, contract type, or goods and services procured can cause cost overruns or project delays. It is important to use available resources and engage ITS experts and the ICM community who have experience in ICM implementation.
6. Is transit readily available?
   • Transit alternatives are an important component of ICM and assists in reducing congestion. Having reliable bus routes, bus rapid transit, high occupancy vehicle lanes, and commuter rail are all important transportation alternatives that can relieve a clogged highway.
7. Are current systems optimized?
   • Ensuring that transportation systems are optimized and that additional infrastructure improvements won't alleviate congestion assists in the solutions to be proposed as part of ICM.
8. Are we ready to engage the public and gather feedback?
   • Stakeholder and public engagement is vital for any successful transportation project. By engaging stakeholders and the public throughout the development and deployment of ICM, it provides them with a better understanding of the project, increases buy-in, assists in setting expectations, and limits potential "surprises."
9. Is there open-mindedness for changes in travel behavior?
   • A major component of ICM is getting travelers to change their behaviors to reduce congestion, like using transit, carpooling, or driving during non-peak times. Successful ICM Sites have been able to get travelers to use other modes of transportation, such as public transportation (light rail, bus rapid transit, etc.), carpooling, or managed lanes.
10. Do we have organizational and institutional support?
    • Interagency and institutional support are critical pieces of ICM. A strong ICM Champion, leadership, clear vision, and robust participation are vital to laying the foundation for success. Without the coordination of transportation agencies and organizations, multimodal communication and coordination is extremely difficult.